https://militaryanalizer.com/8bqzm6mzd Feb272017
Reflections on 10 years of blogging
My first post I am IrvineRenter (Inventory Cholesterol) debuted ten years ago on February 27, 2007.
https://care4needycopts.org/5iyump2 
Over the last 10 years, I posted every weekday without fail. It’s been a source of joy and discipline that’s shaped my life, my career, and my character. During my ten-year run, I observed many trends come and go, and I learned a great deal about the art of blogging. Today, I want to share some of these observations with you.
Blogging needs a purpose
I started writing ten years ago because I wanted to save people from financial ruin. I firmly believed housing was a financial bubble, and I was right. I didn’t do it for money or fame as I wrote completely anonymously and without any compensation. It wasn’t even until months back I reached out to Roofing SEO company to actually make some money out of the blogs. I blogged purely because believed it was the right thing to do.
https://pastiebap.com/site-news/hlqs3bcscuw When I published The Great Housing Bubble, I decided to drop my anonymity. On my publication date, I was on the front page of the OC Register, and I held an event attended by more than 250 people, many of who personally thanked me for saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars by talking them out of buying a home in 2007 and 2008. It was deeply satisfying to believe I had accomplished something that helped so many people.
https://gloriag.com.ar/zegrge2q6jl I thought about this and I doubt I would have consistently blogged for that first year and a half without a sense of purpose. Blogging to make money or boost a website’s SEO is not sufficient purpose to keep at it. And that’s now including your knowledge of pbn creation. Blogging itself must be personally rewarding, or people simply won’t put the energy necessary into doing it.
Blogging will not make money
Order Xanax Overnight Delivery Some bloggers have written books and many others blog posts on how to make money blogging. Mostly, their methods don’t work. Adsense ads don’t pay enough to make a living (or even a hobby income like when you play iphone games that pay real money), subscription models don’t work, and nobody will pay much for blog content because they can’t make any money either.
Google prevents the creation of quality web content
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Google ostensibly wants people to create good content, and they promise the reward of traffic for bloggers that do so. However, when Google wiped out the newspaper industry, they monopolized online advertising. As a result, they charge advertisers plenty of money and pay next to nothing to content providers. Since Google faces no real competition, they don’t have to pay content providers much to keep them in Google’s system.
https://partyhosthelper.com/l99t7vmn Google’s margins are much fatter than newspapers ever were because newspapers used to pay reporters a living wage to provide decent content. Now, millions of people gladly provide high-quality free content for Google to serve up to advertisers, and the only real compensation for the content provider is that someone reads their content and that’s why optimizing for Google results is important and services from sites as https://victoriousseo.com/services/seo-content/ can really help on this. Readership is emotionally rewarding, but it doesn’t pay the bills,
Subscription models fail
https://www.angelinvestmentnetwork.net/lu0a3a1rpv It’s extremely difficult to establish an online subscription model to pay for quality content. Even the best newspapers generally give away their content for nothing. Most tried at one time or another to establish subscription models, and almost none of them succeed. Some specialty providers like the Wall Street Journal get some subscribers, but if the New York Times can’t successfully do it, how is a blogger supposed to gain enough subscribers to pay the bills?
https://integraleuropeanconference.com/2022/11/17/5ahpn9e1a The main reason subscription models fail is also related to Google. Since people willingly provide Google with high-quality content for very little (or in my case nothing), any new subscription service faces tough competition from quality providers who charge nothing at all.
The rise of “Craptent”
The only successful business model that works within the system dominated by Google Adsense is what I call the Craptent model. Craptent is aptly named because it’s low-quality crap that’s produced quickly and passed off as “content” to Google. I produce five articles per week, and it’s difficult to keep the content quality high at that level of production. I’m a very prolific writer, and I couldn’t produce any more than I do without a significant decline in quality.
https://militaryanalizer.com/7yxmcfnp The craptent model requires bloggers to produce 30 to 90 pieces of content per week, generally contributed to a highly-trafficked site in order to generate enough Adsense clicks to make any money. There is no way to produce any level of quality when producing that many posts, yet this is the only model proven to provide a reliable online income for bloggers.
https://victoriamapperley.co.uk/sym76p8ve I’ve spoken to reporters who lamented the decline of journalistic quality at their own newspapers. One reporter told me how she spent a week on a great piece of investigative journalism, and when she posted it, it was only read by about 500 people. That day someone posted some craptent about cats at the paper, and it was clicked by over 4,000 people. Cat crap won’t win a Pulitzer, but it’s the only way to pay the bills.
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At some point, the Google monopoly will crumble, and providers of quality content may be able to monetize their efforts enough to make a living at it. But just as there are very few professional writers who make a living solely on their book sales, there will probably never be very many professional bloggers who can survive on their online publishing.
https://www.greenlifestylemarket.com/2022/11/17/86kh2o6v Blogging is not about the money, and anyone who blogs because they believe they will make money is engaging in wishful thinking. Unless they find a deeper purpose for their writing, they will not persist because they simply won’t make enough money to justify the time investment in the activity.
Blogging is more than writing
https://missafricausa.org/fd7c6cerkh One of the things I enjoy most about blogging is the versatility of the medium. Blogging is far more than just writing. Blogging easily incorporates charts, graphs, images, cartoons, videos, podcasts and other forms of audio-visual communication. Combining these media into new forms is unique to this artform corporate lawyer.
https://thebirthhour.com/240ch6a7f7d Books do well with text, and books do a passable job with charts and graphs, but books fail with other media. Graphic novels and comics do well with images and cartoons, but these are expensive to produce, and they don’t work as well with text. No printed media can utilize audio or video, so they aren’t comparable with blogging in that regard.
Videos and podcasts by themselves can have aspects of blogging, but the media limits how quickly you can absorb it. The playback speed is what it is, and it’s difficult to skim a video for the content you want. Reading and scanning is much quicker with the printed word, so blogging provides the best aspects of all the other media.
In my opinion, we are only at the beginning of exploring this medium. Because blogging is so versatile, and since various other media can be incorporated in novel ways, I think blogging will continue to grow and advance — assuming someone can figure out how to make money from it.
The writing still matters
https://partyhosthelper.com/unat0hy3e0 I never considered myself a great writer, and I still don’t. My writing evolved a great deal over the last ten years because each year, I review several books on style and grammar, and I work diligently to improve. A couple of years ago I subscribed to Grammarly, and each week, it sends me an update on my writing statistics. On any given week, I will use between 2,500 and 3,500 unique words, I write between 25,000 and 60,000 total words, and I correct about 200-350 mistakes. I am consistently prolific.
I’ve gone through phases with my writing. Lately, I focus much attention on eliminating “be” verbs in favor of active verbs, and I make the subjects of my sentences real people rather than nominalizations. I try to write less complex sentences using fewer semi-colons and colons; however, sometimes I just like the structure of those sentences. The goal is to make the writing easily understandable to the widest possible audience while mixing it up enough to keep it interesting. If the writing fails on either of those two measures, people don’t come back.
The conversation is important
https://care4needycopts.org/xqe8xy29 Since my first day of blogging, I’ve maintained a regular dialog with my readers. Some bloggers don’t take the time to interact with their readers. Those producing craptent don’t have the time, while some bloggers are so arrogant that they don’t believe their readers have anything to teach them. And some are so thin-skinned that they can’t take the sometimes trollish feedback.
Early on in my blogging, I began calling my comments “astute observations.” I found this raised the gravitas of the comments and curtailed many of the useless or trollish remarks. It put everyone on notice that the people commenting on the blog were there for a more intellectually stimulating conversation. If people wanted to be crazy and spout thoughtless nonsense, there were plenty of sites that catered to that. While it may reduce the quantity of the comments, it greatly improved the quality. The signal to noise ratio has always been favorable here.
https://www.angelinvestmentnetwork.net/dcrq5n5m I’ve always found the astute observations one of the most useful features of the site. I’ve learned a great deal from the astute observers here, and I’ve changed my opinions on many subjects based on the feedback and further reflection. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Blogging must be fun
Even if bloggers find a purpose for their writing, they still must find the activity enjoyable if they plan to stick with it. Even the most satisfying activity will become tedious if there isn’t enjoyment in it as well.
https://missafricausa.org/mnmu9zbzwd Over the last ten years, I endured many ups and downs. Even in my darkest times, when I sit down to write, I am completely in the moment, and I forget my outside problems and concerns. When I write, I find a voice that channels through me, and even after ten years, I still find as much joy and excitement in the activity as I did back in 2007. If I didn’t, I doubt I would carry on.
Housing isn’t as interesting as it used to be
Ten years ago, housing was extraordinarily interesting. We were in the grip of a financial mania, and people fervently believed in their sad fantasies of endless riches through homeownership. People were foolishly extracting their home equity and spending it like kool-aid intoxicated homeowners. People were so caught up in the mania that they actually believed they were superior investors, and since they were homeowners, they were superior human beings to us lowly renters who missed out on the party.
https://thebirthhour.com/88hizoemf3 We enjoyed issues like strategic default, mortgage equity withdrawal, impending price collapse, economic calamity, and a whole array of other factors no longer a fixture on our real estate scene.
https://integraleuropeanconference.com/2022/11/17/sfrv5l1tul It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
https://markmadsen.com/2022/11/17/mjnxsph At times I miss the excitement of that era, but in other respects, I’m thankful for the dull security of today’s housing market. In retrospect, I hope it’s never that exciting again.
https://militaryanalizer.com/y8u7g8hn 
For now, I have no plans to quit writing. In addition to educating another generation, I still have a few things to accomplish.
I’m about to launch an updated website for real estate search with all the cost of ownership calculations that used to be on this site. I invested in improving the search experience and creating a back-end that will allow me to expand to unlimited MLSs. You will hear more in the coming days and weeks.
https://kevinreillycollection.com/udggr1x8wcb I’m also about to relaunch by housing market reports on an inexpensive subscription model. I found a reliable data source that allows me to run my housing market analysis on most states, metros, counties, cities, neighborhoods and zip codes across the United States. I will be writing more about that soon as well. I plan to bring back weekend posts on housing markets around Southern California and the Bay Area.
Blogging has been a good platform for both personal and business growth, and I plan to keep writing for many years to come.
Thank you for your continued readership.
Landlords Are Taking Over the U.S. Housing Market
As rising home prices, slow new home construction, and demographic shifts push homeownership rates to 50-year lows, the U.S. is increasingly a country of renters—and landlords.
Last year, 37 percent of homes sold were acquired by buyers who didn’t live in them, according to tax-assessment data compiled in a new report published by Attom Data Solutions and ClearCapital.com Inc.
That number may include second homes, or properties acquired by investors who seek to fix up old homes and resell them at a profit. But it’s also a strong indication that landlords are playing a larger role in the U.S. housing market.
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In the years following the foreclosure crisis, Wall Street drove a rise in the share of homes purchased by landlords, as private equity firms bought thousands of cheap homes. In 2012, institutional investors accounted for 7.8 percent of home sales, according to the report.
Rising home prices led big investors to curtail their purchases, and the share of homes acquired by institutional investors fell to 2.9 percent last year. But as Wall Street backed off, smaller investors picked up the slack, aided by tools developed to help big investors find, finance, and manage rental properties.
Smaller investors—particularly those who have already paid off their mortgages on the homes they live in—see rental properties as an attractive way to save for retirement.
I think if the rentals are located in a above average growth job market that should stay that way, and if the landlord has significant cash to back up any vacant times, then real estate is certainly better than Treasuries, and in many cases, better than stocks. However, better than treasuries and stocks is only east and west coast locations not to far from the coast.
Middle of the country locations are likely worse than stocks and treasuries.
If you’re measuring actually cash returns, you have that exactly backward. The coastal areas provide miserable cash returns because the prices are so high. Perhaps it will make it up over time with rent growth or price appreciation, but the current returns are not that great.
Hinterlands markets are great because you can get the cash returns and a decent kick from appreciation. Midwest markets are pure cash plays but many of them depreciate over time, so you have to be careful about not getting trapped in those properties. You can buy a $30,000-$50,000 property, but it’s going to still be worth the same or less when you go to sell. In the meantime, management issues and capex can wipe out multiple years of cash flow if you aren’t careful.
Yes, I see that in my old hometown. Properties have barely appreciated in price over the last 30 years. The home price appreciation in some areas doesn’t compensate for the additional investment required to keep up the property.
As we have discussed previously, this is going to continue to go up.
Already in areas like Orange County and LA, 60%-70% of the households are renters.
US existing home sales hit 10-year high in January
U.S. home resales surged to a 10-year high in January as buyers shrugged off higher prices and mortgage rates, a sign of growing confidence in the economy.
The National Association of Realtors said on Wednesday existing home sales jumped 3.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.69 million units last month. That was the highest level since February 2007.
December’s sales pace was revised up to 5.51 million units from the previously reported 5.49 million units. Economists had forecast sales rising 1.1 percent to a 5.54 million-unit pace in January. The NAR also revised sales data going back to 2014. The revisions were minor and had no impact on the characterization of the housing market.
Sales were up 3.8 percent from January 2016. Demand for housing is being underpinned by a strengthening labor market, which is improving employment opportunities for young adults and, in turn, boosting household formation.
A persistent shortage of properties available for sale, which is lifting house prices, remains an obstacle to a robust housing market. While the 30-year fixed mortgage rate appears to be stabilizing after rising rapidly in recent months, it still remains above 4 percent. In contrast, annual wage growth is running below 3 percent.
The bidding wars are common. Clearly, up and down the coast, these are the strongest bidding wars in 10 years. The inventory is so low prices will need to adjust upward. I just saw a home sitting on a horrifically busy corner across from a massive apartment building go under agreement. $1,300,000. This is an older hope flipped. Ugly. Small. In 2013, that would have been half that. Incredible.
I don’t think we will see much upward price adjustment because people are reaching affordability limits in most of these markets. When properties come to market that aren’t properly priced, they just sit there. The properties that are priced near recent comps sell quickly. Supply is very low, but if the price gets too high, people are either unable or unwilling to raise their bids, most likely unable.
There have been a surprising number of homes go up for sale in my tract in the first two months of this year, but they all have the “sold” sign within a few weeks. I don’t think there is currently anything listed without one of those signs now.
The markets I’ve been watching move fast when the price is right.
Americans Haven’t Been This Optimistic About the Job Market in Over 30 Years
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The largest share of Americans in decades believes the labor market still has room to grow. Thirty-five percent of U.S. consumers surveyed by the University of Michigan this month expect unemployment to further decline during the year ahead, the largest share of respondents since March 1984 — a time when unemployment was a full three percentage points higher than the current rate of 4.8 percent.
Home Buyers Say Rising Interest Rates are Top Concern
Despite increased concerns over rising rates, most Americans will move forward with a home purchase should rising rates increase their monthly payment by $100
Feb 24, 2017
SEATTLE, Feb. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — The majority (53 percent) of current home shoppers consider rising interest rates to be among the top factors impacting their ability to purchase a home, according to a new survey from Zillow Group Mortgages[i]. Mortgage rates increased following the U.S. presidential election and federal funds rate hike in December. With several more federal funds rate increases expected this year, rising rates may have an impact on home buying activity and affordability for the first time in years.
Respondents who are currently in the process of searching for or buying a home claim they are most concerned about finding an affordable home amidst low inventory (65 percent), followed by concerns over rising interest rates (53 percent). When this same survey was conduct in 2015[ii], rising mortgage rates (50 percent) ranked lower among top concerns for home buyers, falling behind both finding an affordable home (73 percent) and saving for a down payment (59 percent).
Despite rising concerns, plans to purchase won’t be impacted – at least initially. Most people (83 percent) planning to buy within the next three years will continue with their home buying plans even if rates increase their monthly mortgage payment by $100. Nearly half (49 percent) of home shoppers would move forward with a home purchase even if rising rates were to increase their monthly payments by at least $200.
That said, as rates rise and monthly payments for homes will increase, buyers’ budgets will be more strained. A quarter of home shoppers claim they would reconsider the type of home they are searching for, such as looking for a smaller home or less expensive community, should their monthly payment increase by up to $100 (25 percent). If monthly payments were to increase up to $200, another 38 percent of home shoppers would change the budget of the home they are searching for.
“For years, falling interest rates have been a boon to the U.S. housing market, keeping monthly mortgage payments low for first-time and move-up buyers alike, even as home values rose,” said Erin Lantz, vice president of mortgages for Zillow Group. “As rates rise this year, first-time buyers and those looking to buy in expensive markets where affordability is already an issue will feel the pinch of higher rates on their budget. That said, for most borrowers, there is quite a bit of head room for rates to rise before home-buying becomes unaffordable.”
What’s Happening With Wage Growth?
Don’t dismiss anomalous numbers just because they don’t support your preferred theory.
Wall Street economists insisted for months that the labor market couldn’t possibly get tighter without triggering wage inflation. “We are at full employment,” Deutsche Bank Securities headlined a note to clients in October. “Leading indicators of inflation flashing red,” it wrote days later. “On the cusp of full recovery,” Goldman Sachs wrote in December. “Wage inflation continues to gain traction,” JPMorgan Chase economists said in January.
Then came February, and Wall Street’s much-anticipated wage pressure was nowhere to be seen. Even though employers added a more-than-expected 227,000 workers in January, average hourly earnings rose just 0.1 percent. Forecasters struggled to make sense of why Americans’ pay had barely risen at all. “What happened with wages?” asked economists at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
It’s hard to blame the economists for overestimating wage growth; they’re applying the time-honored law of supply and demand. It stands to reason that when workers are in greater demand, they’ll be able to hold out for better pay. The mystery is why that hasn’t been happening in the U.S., at least not as much as most experts expected.
The pay-growth puzzle bears on the vitality of the U.S. economy in coming years, to say nothing of the vitality of the Donald Trump presidency. If wage inflation really does threaten to overheat, the Federal Reserve under Chair Janet Yellen will feel obliged to raise interest rates to slow down the economy. That will prevent Trump from making good on his campaign promises to raise the growth rate to 3.5 percent, 4 percent, 5 percent, or more. If there’s no wage inflation brewing, on the other hand, the Fed can afford to hold back, economic growth can accelerate, and the Republicans should do well in the 2018 midterm elections and beyond.
No matter what you think of Trump, you should be hoping that the U.S. economy isn’t, in fact, already bumping up against its speed limit. Because if it is, it means that speed limit is distressingly low—and American living standards can improve only at a snail’s pace. Output dropped sharply during the last recession. Instead of springing back like a yo-yo, it’s drifted upward at a meager 2 percent a year. If the economy had grown since the end of 2007 at the average pace it did from 1947 to 2007, it would be 22 percent bigger than it is today. That’s a difference in annual gross domestic product of more than $4 trillion.
People in all ares have settled for less. Business’s pursue less in quality of goods and less in quality of service in pursuit of the consumers demand for low cost “stuff” and services. This is holding down wages and quality of life.
Any reasonable minimum amount of customer service or quality is tagged as a luxury.
I remember when I heard you on NPR while driving and I was like: “I knew him from way back on Lasner’s blog, he’s all grown up LOL.”
That’s interesting. I wonder if they coached him on speaking in the quiet, calm NPR voice.
This part is repeated twice:
Books do well with text, and books do a passable job with charts and graphs, but books fail with other media. Graphic novels and comics do well with images and cartoons, but these are expensive to produce, and they don’t work as well with text. No printed media can utilize audio or video, so they aren’t comparable with blogging in that regard.
Thanks. That’s a glitch in WordPress that appeared in a recent update. When you split a paragraph, it often repeats the lower portion of the split. I usually catch those, but that one slipped past me.
Very much enjoy your blog Larry. I hope it continues to bring you joy so that you keep at it.
Thank you.